We Went to War

David Krashes This story is an excerpt from the July 2005 special section "We Went to War."

David Krashes was an engineer in the making when he joined the Army at age 18.

His college days were cut short and Krashes was sent to the front with the Combat Infantry Regiment, 99th Division. He was sent overseas on a troop carrier along with 6,000 others. "We had a couple of submarine scares on the way," said Krashes.

After landing at LeHavre, the men were trucked through Belgium. "LeHavre had been destroyed," says Krashes. "The buildings were all just shells. I remember the telephone poles. The bottom of every one of them had been blasted away. The Belgium people came out and cheered as the trucks came through. They handed out bottles of wine and cheese, they were so thankful to see the troops after being overrun by the Germans."

Krashes spent three months, October, November, and December at the front line near the German border. "The weather was cold and the snow was two feet deep. It was snowing and the country hilly and heavily wooded. We were in foxholes or slit trenches. You had to be in holes because the artillery was fired into the trees so the tree bursts would scatter shrapnel all around the area. If you were above ground you'd get hit. A lot of guys were killed that way."

Dave Krashes during his days as a soldier. Krashes was one of the first in his infantry group to earn the Combat Infantry Badge. One night, two of four men came back from a patrol. One man had been wounded and another stayed with him. "The commander said we'd have to leave them there because it was too dangerous," says Krashes. "After 24 hours of discussion, some of us privates decided we'd go out anyway. The commander agreed a volunteer patrol could go."

The men knew they would have to carry the wounded soldier past the Nazi machine guns and over a minefield. "At 9 p.m. the whole line lit up with artillery fire," Krashes recalls. "When I saw that, I felt ours was the greatest country in the world. It gave us a chance to get the sergeant out. We carried him almost two miles." The sergeant had his foot amputated as the result of his injury.

That Combat Infantry Badge later became the Bronze Star, which Krashes received about 20 years ago. One time, during their advance, Krashes' squad fell behind, as they struggled to carry 54-pound boxes of hand grenades. "All of a sudden we found ourselves behind the German lines." They decided to leave the boxes of grenades and after three days of marching over wet, muddy ground and through ruts filled with a foot and a half of water, they found another part of their division.

His company got put on the defensive on a hillside about a mile from where the German guns were firing directly at them. "You stayed in your foxhole all day long," Krashes says.